LITFM is your weekly guide to the world of organic gardening practices. It is our goal to make gardening accessible for all while promoting good land stewardship and sustainable practices by providing honest and balanced information backed by verifiable scientific fact.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Madness? No this is SUMMER!

Here we are in the summer monsoon season and it’s another
slightly rain soaked edition of Lost in the Farmer’s Market! In todays edition
I’m going to talk a bit about a possible GMO item that you may not have
realized was GMO and, a bit about harvesting and storing some of the more
unusual garden produce.

First off I’d like to talk about a GMO item you find at the
supermarket that you probably never knew was GMO. In this case I am referring
to canola which has the scientific name of Brassica rapa ssp. oleifera. However
the original common name of canola was rape and or rape seed. Honestly I kind
of like the name change, if only for the fact it prevents incredibly tasteless
jokes. Originally canola oil was not used for cooking in fact it was so bitter
it’s only use was in oil lamps and in ancient times was most prominently used
as the oil of choice for light houses. It also was used as machine lubricant
for steam locomotives. Despite this today it is the third largest source of
vegetable type oil in the world. What made canola undesirable for consumption
was its in credibly bitter flavor which comes from high levels of
glucosinolates. Basically this was part
of the plants’ defense mechanism to prevent anything from eating it or its
seeds thus partly ensuring it passed on its genetic matter. Attempts by people
to breed out the bitterness were attempted for quite some time but not
perfected until the advent of true genetic engineering. This means the Canola
oil we see in all those foods even at the heath stores has likely been tampered
with and may be the cause of digestive problems. In short buyer beware, keep an
eye out for canola as it may not be from a ‘clean’ genetic source. That said I
have to mention that the word Canola itself is somewhat of an acronym, as it
comes from the word CANadian Oilseed Low-Acid.Further more Canola itself produces quite a bit of nectar and makes for
a good winter cover crop and can influence the flavor of honey if honey bees
collect from it. There are some reported uses of some sort of oil product made
from canola is used as a fertilizer of sorts.

Canola and its hazards aside, some of you who’ve met me in
person or have been reading this blog a while have noticed I have a affinity
for plant alternatives. That is food-bearing plants that are not the run of the
mill varieties one would normally see or buy.One of my favorites is ground cherries because as a member of the night
shade family they are native to North and South America,
and are well adapted to our climate and our soil. As far as fruit go, the fruit
are protected by a papery husk that means you have to work less to get your
crop since most other things that might eat it may not know the fruit is ripe.
Now in the latest heavy rains and odd weather I’ve discovered another means to
tell if the fruit is ready other then gently tapping the plants to see if the
husks fall off. It seems heavy rain provides just enough vibration to rattle the
ready fruits free and best of all, the entire little husk covered cherries
float! For production purposes someone with a rain want attachment on a hose
could just gently water the plant and find the ripest fruits without laboring
to much. In terms of storage the normal procedure for ground cherries is to
remove the husk, wash, and put in a freezer jar. I don’t know how long the
fruit keeps in a refrigerator and so the fruit is always frozen for later use
in a winter bread recipe called Winter Ambrosia. Admittedly should I harvest
enough ground cherries I might be tempted to try brewing something out of them.
I can’t even begin to imagine what ground cherry wine might taste like but I
bet it’d be flat out awesome.

I might add the same rule for harvest applies to most things
that come out of the garden, but as it’s blueberry and strawberry season still
those two plants get the exact same treatment (picked, washed, frozen) for the
purposes of winter storage. The idea is to fill up the freezer early, so that the
first harvests of the spring and summer fruits are preserved for winter, while
the later harvests are either for fresh eating or for canning. The idea here is
to have some form of home grown food item ready to go a couple times a week
through the three winter months. Some of you out there might be wondering what
all the fuss is, and indeed the value of stockpiling some of your seasonal
harvest may seem a bit much.As it turns
out in numerous trials by more then one university, and the USDA vine ripened
tomatoes have 1/3 more vitamin C over force ripened ones like you see at the
supermarket. Furthermore those same tomatoes if grown with nutrients provided
by manure and compost have been found to be higher in antioxidantsand possess two times the amounts of
quercetin and kaemferol both of which are forms of lycopene and aid in
preventing cancer.It isn’t a stretch to
then say that this effect cant be entirely limited to just one food-bearing
plant and thus it makes some sense to say that home grown food itself has to be
better then store bought and preserving it for the winter means you eat better
all year. All that said here is one of my favorite recipes for a food preserve.
It’s called the ‘Bullion Bomb’ basically it’s a flavored and concentrated vegetable
item that is typically frozenin pint
jars but can be scaled up fora quart or
half gallon mason jar if you wish.

4. Simmer until vegetables and herbs are tender and the
amount of liquid is reduced.

5. Allow mix to cool some before transferring to a freezer
jar.

Monsoons and thunder whatnots aside this Saturday I will be
at the Fayetteville Farmers / City Market in downtown Fayetteville. The market runs rain or shine
as most of the farmers do have large tents, but strong winds and especially
violent weather of course may curtail the event. The market runs from 8:00 am
through 1:00pm (I will be there 9-1) and is located at 325 Franklin Street. This week I’ll have some new stuff from the
USDA, copies of Southward Skies and will be teamed up with the Sustainable
neighbors folks, so stop on by.Here is
a list of what is coming to market on Saturday

Houseplants

4x Sanseveria cylindrica – African Spear

1x Peperomia verticillata – Radial Peperomia

Garden Plants

2x Large Beef Steak Tomato

6x Small Beefsteak Tomato

1x Roma Tomato (Cooking Type)

1x San Marzano Tomato (Cooking type)

5x Burgundy Okra

2x Nankeen Cotton

1x Green Carolina Wonder
(Sweet, Bell)

7x Red Carolina Wonder
(Sweet, Bell)

6x Yellow Banana Peppers (Sweet)

1x Ghost Pepper (Sweet)

1x Red Peter Pepper (Ornamental and Edible)

2x Sangria Pepper (Ornamental)

1x Litchi Tomato (Tomato relative, sweet)

5x Egyptian Onion (starter bulbs)

(This post may be edited later in the night to add
additional items such as herbs.)

Next week

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Available Soon

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So with all that food preserving and the discovery of a
hidden GMO covered for this episode we look forward to hearing from you and
seeing you if you stop by the Farmers market. If not feel free to drop a
comment here on the blog even if it’s a request for a plant crop to be carried
and sold next year. So far we have already adjusted our plans to include
different colors of cotton but it’s not to late to add to that. Remember folks
summer thunderstorms can produce dangerous flooding, wind and lighting strike
conditions so please be careful and always check your pots to make sure the
water from the rain is draining out. This wraps up another episode of LITFM, as
always folks Keep ‘em growin!

BL2inc

Thomas Clark is the proprietor of Bordeaux Light Landscaping, which is located in fayetteville North Carolina. He is currently working towards a degree in Horticultural technology and has more then thirteen years of field experience in landscaping and horticulture. The latest thing to add onto this is the recent publishing of a book, 'Southward Skies: A Northern Guide to Southern Gardening' which is a reasonably priced but comprehensive easy to read gardening book about all things verticulture.